Life has a way of luring us into delusions and illusions.
Sometimes those illusions are about what is possible or practical — escapist fantasies that trap us in fairy-tale endings.
Other times those illusions are about how much we really contributed to our results.
We gather facts and data; we take action and create results. Based on this, we form opinions and beliefs about what is possible, what is practical, what is realistic.
Here’s the problem:
You don’t know what you don’t know.
You don’t know what you’re not seeing.
You don’t see where you’re not looking.
The tangible and material experience we have each day is only one small part of what is happening.
Consider a photograph of a sunset: it doesn’t show you everything in the sky, or the way that the light is hitting the landscape or buildings that stand behind the photographer.
And a photograph can’t capture the temperature in the air or the direction of the breeze.
A photograph shows you only what is captured in its frame.
It represents a slice of the bigger picture, a sliver of the full experience.
At any moment, we see life as we see a photograph, taking in only a narrow sliver of our experience.
When we believe that this narrow sliver of our experience is the whole experience, we are caught in an illusion.
Yes, your actions may lead to certain results.
But what else contributed to those results that you don’t acknowledge because you can’t see it?
You walked into the right room at the right time and met the person who would become your life partner or your next client. Your tweet landed in the feed of someone who became your business partner. Your blog post landed in the feed of the right client at the right time.
Of course, we need to do the work so we are prepared to leverage these opportunities. But doing the work is only part of the process. If you did the work but the little synchronicities didn’t align to put you in those places at those times, your ending may have been much different.
So much of what happens in life is caused by what we don’t see. The experience is bigger than the photograph.
Today, the sun makes its annual connection with Neptune in the sign of Pisces, known as a cazimi.
Neptune is a planet that speaks to imagination, spirituality, and faith. It’s considered the modern ruler of Pisces, the sign of oneness, and dissolving borders. Pisces wants us to flow into the whole experience.
Neptune often gets blamed for making things hazy and creating delusion, but in its strength, Neptune reminds us that there’s a bigger picture to life, a working of the universe that’s far beyond our capacity to understand with a rational mind.
If we only put our trust in what we see, we will have a limited and frustrating experience in life. Or, we’ll fall into the illusion that our results are due only to our efforts and skills.
To fully appreciate and navigate life requires imagination, faith, and humility.
We must learn to trust that which we don’t see.
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